Continuum
by I Took the One Less Travelled
Summary: Jack Harkness has found that it's easy to track the Doctor's adventures across the earth. It's also easy to watch Rose Tyler grow up, pay for Martha Jones' med school, give Amelia Pond a wooden TARDIS model for Christmas the year that she's nine. The Doctor can't always take care of them, but Jack can. What other use could his eternity possibly have, anyway?


Captain Jack Harkness considers the Doctor's companions to be his business. The man isn't exactly subtle, after all, and it's relatively easy to track his movements through time and space and the people that he takes with him if you know what you're doing. At Torchwood, Jack definitely has all of the required equipment to keep track of the Doctor.

He knows that UNIT keeps comprehensive files on those that they believe that the Doctor has associated with, but he also knows that those files are nowhere near complete. Besides—they're just interested in watching these people, not taking care of them.

And Jack knows that even though the Doctor might've left them behind, he wants them to be taken care of. There is Barbara Wright and Ian Chesteron, who disappear from the year 1963 and don't come back for a year and a half—that has the Doctor written all over it. Despite the hits that their professional reputations have taken because of their unexpected and unexplained absences, Jack manages to get them both jobs at Oxford with a few phone calls.

Sarah Jane Smith is a reporter who has a mysterious trip to Aberdeen. Jack arranges for a coach bus to take her home again, and every time that robot dog from the year five thousand is on the fritz, he sneaks onto her property to fix the piece of scrap metal.

Jo Grant gets married to a man of little means, but somehow, her dream wedding is practically dropped into her lap. Jack never makes an effort to correct her assumption that the Doctor provided the money for it—he wouldn't want to take that last piece of the Doctor away from her.

Ace McShane is a deeply disturbed teenager after her association with the Doctor, but Jack gets her back onto the right track. He gets her into contact with a woman's shelter, and Ace eventually breaks free of them and starts another of her own, her childhood nickname hung up for good in favour of her real first name, Dorothy.

A little girl named Amelia Pond knows a man called the Doctor. Nobody in her little village is willing to play to her 'delusions', but Jack manages to commission a miniature TARDIS model, and get it to her in the form of a wrapped present at the foot of her bed one Christmas Eve. Amelia, of course, assumes that Santa gave it to her. Eventually she stops believing in fairy tales and Santa and turns into a hardened teenager called Amy, she never does figure out where the model came from. When the Doctor streams back into her life and shows her that a person can jump through your years like a child jumps through a sprinkler, she figures that at some point, the Doctor's guilt at being twelve years too late has spoken to him, and he goes back and gives it to her. She never mentions this theory to the Doctor, and the Doctor never knows about Jack's involvement in his glorious Pond's life.

The only one of the Doctor's companions that ever sees Jack's influence on all of their lives is Melody Pond. He finds her in New York, a newly regenerated baby in the year 1969, and calls in some favours to piece together a time machine to get her to Leadworth in the nineties, and get himself back to where he's supposed to be.

When Jack fights in World War I, he encounters a very young man—practically a boy, really—with eyes far older than they should be. His name is Timothy Latimer, and the moment that he brushes his skin against Jack's, he knows far more about who Jack is and where he came from than anyone has for a very long time.

Canton Delaware works with a mysterious Captain in the year 1971, and he finds that he isn't the only one on the mission who is _far_ too familiar with things that shouldn't happen.

There is a woman named Clara Oswald, whose name has appeared far too many times, in far too many places, all attached to a person with the same face to _not_ be connected with the Doctor. Every time Jack encounters her in any capacity, he helps her out however he can. She never remembers him from time-to-time, and the answer to this comes when he finally meets a young version of her in the late twentieth century. This one is the original one, he realizes, measuring her timelines against his vortex manipulator. The reason that the others were all so tangled up is that they all come back to this one.

He does his best, but he can't save her mother. He tries to send her grants, money, a way to travel like she has dreamed of—he isn't the Doctor, he doesn't have a TARDIS to show her, but he can give her that much—but she doesn't leave. She refuses to run out on the people that matter to her when they need her. A quality that Jack admires, but the Doctor is unlikely to appreciate. Still, though, he sits back and watches the fireworks.

Martha Jones comes to his attention long before he realizes that she coincides with his version of the Doctor. She's having some difficulty paying for medical school, so he arranges for a scholarship to be sent her way with an expression of unholy glee plastered across his face, at the thought of the Doctor's shock, when it comes to travelling with a real, actual doctor.

Donna Noble has two weddings, both of which he pays for, anonymously funding Donna's grandfather and father. When he meets her, he is secure in the belief that this magnificent redhead deserves nothing less than the best, wherever she goes and whatever she wishes to do. The Doctor beats him to providing for her with the lottery ticket, but he satisfies himself with the knowledge that Donna's wearing a seven thousand pound dress at her second wedding.

Of course, the most important to Jack, and the most deeply personal, is the process of watching a spunky little girl grow up on an estate in London. He spends an absurd amount of time at the Powell Estate in the nineties, watching her go from head-strong child to teenager who wears too much eyeliner, and finally to the young woman that he knows that the Doctor will adore. He rearranges Jimmy Stone's face, when he breaks Rose's heart. He places himself in close proximity to Mickey Smith at a bar, and it only takes a few drinks to get him to start talking about how much he adores Rose. Jack motivates him into asking her out, figuring that a healthy relationship will do his girl good. He calls in a few favours to get Rose a job in an upscale boutique called Henrik's without knowing that he has just orchestrated her meeting with the Doctor. He only does it so that he can see her delight, and pride in that she's managed something that everyone said impossible.

He also takes great delight in funding their first adventure, paying for a platform to watch the earth explode. Rose looks so utterly young to him by the point, Jack aged beyond comprehension. The Doctor so hurt, so raw, so covered in the shards of the wreckage of the Time War that Jack has to concentrate very heavily on not telepathically connecting with the Doctor's urgently reaching mind, searching for something; _anything_ to fill the empty void left by a people that he never understood how much he'd miss until they were gone.

The Doctor may be a bit negligent in taking care of the people that he loves, but Jack's always there to pick up the slack when he needs it. What else could his eternity be good for, after all?

**I know that I haven't been super-active lately, but not to worry: I haven't abandoned anything. Just busy as my semester reaches its peak and I'm trying to work full-time hours around three classes. I don't know what I was **_**thinking**_**, taking summer classes. To those who celebrate it (myself among them) happy Canada Day on Monday. Also, to Americans (who I am not among, but I hope that you have a pleasant holiday anyway), happy Fourth of July (is that what it's called? Is there an actual name for that holiday? I don't even know, but have a good time). I'm not entirely sure what this story is. I had Jack feels, since my mom has been watching Arrow, and she thinks that John Barrowman is creepy looking. I attribute this to his acting skills, since he apparently plays a rather awful bad guy. Call it a headcanon. I always liked the thought of Jack keeping an eye on the Doctor's companions.**


End file.
